-Grindhouse Fest spotlights the cult gems, sleaze classics, and deranged wonders that defined exploitation cinema’s golden run. Proceed with delight and caution-
Directed by Lee Frost
Written by Bob Cresse and Lee Frost
Starring:
- Maria Lease as WAC Lt. Linda Harman
- Kathy Williams as WAC Lt. Grace Freeman
- Bob Cresse as the Commandant
- Bruce Kimball as Sgt. Klaus Müller
- John Alderman as Capt. Robert Calais
- Rodger Steel as Gen. Erich von Hamer
Rating: 
A nasty milestone, this infamous Video Nasty blew the doors open for one of Grindhouse’s most sordid offshoots: Nazisploitation and women-in-prison carnage. Lee Frost’s ultra-filthy Love Camp 7 got there first, turning swastikas and jackboots into pure fetish fuel. Sure, Visconti’s The Damned hit the same year, but Frost’s trashy shocker beat it to the punch—earning the crown of infamy. It was the first to milk Nazi depravity for sadistic thrills, laying the blueprint for decades of sleaze-soaked torture porn.
Dressed up in fake drama, Love Camp 7 kicks off with a ridiculous setup: two American officers—Lieutenant Linda Harman (Maria Lease) and Lieutenant Grace Freeman (Kathy Williams)—sign up for a suicide mission. Their orders? Sneak into a Nazi camp to meet a Jewish prisoner with top-secret intel. But the “camp” turns out to be no ordinary hellhole: it’s a rundown brothel built to feed the Nazi high command’s sickest kinks. Whips, chains, humiliation—nothing’s off-limits, and the lieutenants get dragged through every degrading spectacle. As the very first Nazisploitation flick, it lays down all the sleazy ground rules of the genre. Frost doesn’t yet crank the shock to eleven, but the film is still scummy enough to wear its filth like a badge of honor.
In Love Camp 7, nobody just “fucks” or “screws.” Nope—they “make love,” at least in the upside-down world of Lee Frost’s script. That warped idea of “love” runs headlong into a cesspool of sleaze, as Nazi creeps paw at and torment their captives on endless repeat. It’s pure garbage, no doubt about it. But damned if there isn’t something darkly funny and almost erotic in the way Frost shoots it—like he’s accidentally making a dirty cartoon out of fascism itself. With its shameless caricatures and over-the-top cruelty, Love Camp 7 becomes a piece of pop art nastiness, a trash classic both ugly and weirdly magnetic.
Forget the “banality of evil”—this is the grindhouse “caricature of evil,” pumped up on cheap thrills and bad taste. Frost doesn’t just flirt with political incorrectness, he wallows in it, and the effect is hard to shake: part joke, part exploitation, all sleaze. The paper-thin plot—basically a conveyor belt of sex scenes—wears out fast. But just when you’re ready to nod off, in stomps Bob Cresse. As the Kommandant, he’s a cartoon brute, a Nazi gone full vaudeville. He’s hammy, he’s hateful, he’s hilarious—and easily the movie’s dirtiest secret weapon.
Shot with cheap gusto by Lee Frost and tighter than a shoestring budget, Love Camp 7 ain’t “good” by any sane measure. The plot’s cockeyed, the storytelling flimsy as hell. But sometimes trash magic happens: the Kommandant flexes his cruelty, and suddenly you’re staring at raw, grotesque spectacle that’s equal parts terrifying and hilarious. That’s exploitation in a nutshell. Am I proud of liking it? Hell no. Do I still get a kick out of it? Absolutely.
